L’Artiste wanted to tag me and he had thought up some curly questions. Unfortunately I had to disappoint him and decline. I was busy sanding wooden window frames yesterday. Admittedly not one of my favorite past-times and therefore I wasn’t in the mood to answer anything last night. Thankfully I have a good excuse. The game they are currently playing is called “Tag-a-Dede” and I am not a Dede, or am I?

Summer came to a screeching halt yesterday. It rained! It was about time… The usually lush, green countryside had taken on a very parched look.

Being indoor creatures through and through, the Dedes become more active the more miserable the weather outside is. Unlike me, they are actually looking forward to the long wet winter. They are now sticking their heads together and hatching plans about what they are going to do next.

Last night, Lou, the young puppy, popped by and asked casually, “So when is your exhibition then?”

“End of June,” I answered. “It is still a while to go.”

“I thought you wanted to finish your next book by then” he reminded me. “I haven’t seen you writing lately.”

“No” I confirmed. “But I am working on it!”

“Just asking” he said. “With all the kerfuffle about the zazzle store we don’t want you to lose sight of what we are about.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you being one of the main characters, does it?”

“Oh am I?” He tried hard to sound surprised, but he is the worst liar under the sun. And he immediately came to the real issue. “Any chance of having a sneak preview?”

“No way!” I exclaimed. “If I let you have a look the others will follow and want to have a read as well. Then everybody will tell me their opinion. That would be a recipe for disaster. I would never finish in time!”

There are certain things you just have to do on your own!

I took the opportunity to thank him for being on his best behaviour when we were in the studio taking photos for the “Embrace Diversity” series. Skeleton Edeltraut was terribly worried and it took me a while to convince her she has nothing to fear. Lou was just lovely that day and visually they are a very nice couple. I would never say this out aloud though.

I wonder whether Pavlova is spoiling the Dedes too much. They don’t seem to be in a hurry to come home. There’s no way their strategy meeting can take two weeks. I think that’s how long it has been since they’ve moved to the burrow. It seems ages. I hope they’ll know when they have outstayed their welcome and come back before they come to blows.

Pavlova certainly tries to make a good impression, but at some stage looking after 40 Dedes and going to the lab everyday might just become a tad too demanding. She might end up having a nervous break-down. I pray one of them will recognise the tell-tale signs and shepherd them back home in time.

I was hoping Devil and Mouse would be back today as the competition has finished. I even went up to the burrow to ask them to come back, but Devil had no inclination to do so. Ah well, on second thought, they wouldn’t be much help anyway. I really can imagine them sitting in the burrow bickering over whether the competition was a success or a failure. Mouse will defend its success and Devil will pooh pooh it. This can go on forever without reaching a decisive conclusion as neither want to give in. I know my Dedes!

In my mind Alien is definitely the winner. Without the competition he would have never known that he is not alone. There are other aliens at the Ohio Falls. However, they seem to be from a different planet. They are certainly more outgoing and inquisitive than the Dede Alien. The Dedes are painfully introverted and mainly concerned with their own little world. But it was very clear in all the stories that nobody considered Alien a threat or even remotely vicious. He (or she) was welcomed everywhere. Everybody just assumed, or maybe hoped, he/she came in peace. What else would you expect from somebody with such a big smile?

We had 4 entries in our little competition and originally I said the prizes would be one book and 2 sets of postcards. This makes – if my math is right – 3 prizes :). What can I do?

I will add another book. So everyone who has gone to the trouble of writing will receive a Thankyou from the Dedes. ArtistatExit0 and Leopoldine will receive the book “Hermit’s Web” and Arindam and Armin will receive 10 Dede postcards each. How did I come to the decision of who gets what? Simply because I know that Arindam and Armin have the book already :). So I hope you find this a fair solution!
I will be in touch via email!

For most of the Dedes it was very hard getting up this morning. Admittedly, this is the case most days. But today it was particularly difficult as they were working hard to tidy up the house yesterday. They are not even half way there. Worse, the house is in a bigger mess than ever. Luckily it is a long weekend and they have an extra day to finish their chores. Understandably, breakfast – which they had on some already packed boxes – was a very quiet affair today. That is, until Devil came running in, barely able to hide his excitement.

“We’ve got a message, we’ve got a message…” He sang and danced around. You might remember he is responsible for the Facebook page and it is all new to him. Of course everybody looked at him and waited. Then he told us this morning he found a lovely message from Cape Town on Facebook.

“Where is that?” Lou, the puppy asked. “Shush,” said Smuggy

“It’s in South Africa, Lou! And I think it is our first official friend there. So it is quite something”

“The blog can be read everywhere in the world, so what’s the big deal?” Smuggy pointed out. “Cut the crap and get on with the story.”

Devil took his time. He enjoyed having everybody’s attention. “But… wait there is more, the young women didn’t ‘find’ our blog… she got the Hermit’s Web book for Christmas from her aunt and she loved it! She was ‘looking’ for our Facebook page!”

“This is indeed interesting,” Mouse gave Devil a hi-five.

“Thinking of it” Detail piped up, “we never heard back from Arindam, who won the book in the Super Dede 2012 competition! He mustn’t have liked it and is keeping mum!”

“Oh, no, no” Mouse defended our friend from India. “He loved it too. He has send an email to Dietlind privately. I don’t want to disclose what is written in emails, but I can assure you, he liked it a lot. You have to take my word for it!”

“We don’t have all day to pat ourselves on the back,” L’Artiste interrupted the celebrations rudely. “Let’s get on with our chores. Otherwise we will never get them done. I want to knock off at 8 tonight. Miss Viwi continues her interview in ||:::VEGGIETORIA::|| and this time it’s with me!”

I have to recap what was on my mind all last week. One of my puppets (I don’t want to name him) has accused me of being prejudiced towards devils and he made noises about suing me for an obscene amount of money, which of course I don’t have. But that is besides the point. I have been thinking about it a lot this week: Am I really prejudiced? Who knows, but certainly not against devils. Honestly, I have spent hours and hours listening to him when he was depressed, because nobody seems to like him. He is not the easiest puppet to deal with. And yes, I had promised him an outing to the boat ramp and had to cancel, but for a very good reason: It was raining cats and dogs and he wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes in this weather.

It annoys me tremendously that he now turns around and just gives me the blanket label of being “prejudiced”, only because he couldn’t get his way. How can one debunk this label? It is such a trap… And I stepped right into it. It is one of those labels that is thrown into the ring when puppets run out of arguments. Nobody wants to be prejudiced, but how can you prove you aren’t?

My accuser has made himself scarce, but I know he is around. I can smell sulphide. The curtains in the living room smell particularly bad, they will have to go in the wash soon. Anyway, I wonder if he is man enough to show his face at the party tonight and I am curious how it goes.

I am going with Witch‘s recommendation and will invite all the Dede puppets for a social get together on Sunday. It comes in handy that it is a long weekend, so I should have no problems recovering before I have to go back to work on Tuesday.

But it is short notice indeed and I am not one to get organised in a hurry. I need my time, so I enlisted Mouse to help me. Honestly, if you ever have an event to publicise, Mouse is your puppet! She knows everybody and always finds something to talk about. She still believes strongly in face-to-face contact to keep friendships going. I think she should turn her skills into a business, but she lacks the necessary self-esteem to go out there and market herself.

I am very happy and grateful that she took over the job of inviting everybody. When I got up this morning, she was already sitting in the kitchen, pounding away on the computer. This is her only weakness: Writing emails takes a long time as she is a one-thumb-typist, but you should see her speed when she is texting….

Of course it would be even faster if the Dede puppets were on Facebook. They are resisting. They are very happy in their own little secret society.

I went around to Witch‘s place last night. She is a brilliant mediator and I needed to confide in someone. Sometimes it is just good to talk to someone and the problems diminish. First of all she put me right. She said it is not always about me! Devil’s Advocate and Fairy Godmother are having an affair and of course Devil’s Advocate doesn’t want anybody to know because he is still married. So, their strange behaviour yesterday had absolutely nothing to do with me and they certainly were not talking about my case with Devil.

I discussed whether a puppet meeting at this stage would be a good idea, as Arindam suggested yesterday after I had posted the latest incident. Witch loves meetings and she says they are always good, but she had an even better idea. She said I should just invite everybody to a party at my house on Saturday. This could defuse the situation, no doubt. And it wouldn’t have an official feel to it.

Then she offered to look in her crystal ball for me to see how it all pans out in the end (of course for a fee – she is not cheap, good old Witch). I shouldn’t have gone for it. Her best crystal ball is in the repair shop at the moment so she had to use her old one. That ball is so unreliable. She couldn’t see anything about me or Devil. All she could see was that Santa Clause will have an accident this year. This wasn’t helpful at all. Unfortunately I had already paid her, she collects her fees in advance and never refunds! It’s common practice, she says.

If I let the kids know that there won’t be any presents this year I will be in even more trouble. Sometimes it is better to keep your knowledge to yourself.

Sure enough, On Sunday the weather was much better (at least between the showers). Devil pestered me all morning to go on our outing. I did not have the time, I really couldn’t fit him in. In the end he got very miffed with me. He didn’t leave the sofa at all but made heaps of snide remarks while I was pacing up and down the hallway trying to get organised. At one stage I had enough and told him off for his upsetting behaviour. When I talked to him he looked a bit meek, and now he is curled up in the corner of the sofa and feeling sorry for himself. He will be okay when I come home tonight. I am sure he will be back to his devilish self in no time. But seeing him how he is right now, makes me feel really bad…

This week will be Black & White Week on my blog. I will even go one step further and make it Silent Week as in Silent Movie. Let the pictures do the talking! No twittering from me :). If anybody has a comment, I will of course reply.

On Tuesday I had to take some pictures at a gathering for one of my clients. That is something I usually don’t do. I don’t like to take images of people I don’t know. I always have the feeling that I am intruding and stealing their soul. It was a business meeting and it was surprisingly easy (I am not saying there were no souls to steal). On my way home I tried to remember any images I had taken showing strangers from the front, apart from the two tourists I posted earlier this week. My thing (when I photograph people) is to take images of everyday solitairy situations. Usually it is just me with my (rather large) camera and the other person on the scene. It’s very unlikely the other person doesn’t notice what I am up to.

Yesterday I sifted through old photographs and I found this one taken at the Viktualienmarkt in Munich. The Viktualienmarkt is a permanent farmer’s market dating back to the 1800’s. It is located wham bang in the middle of town, only a few paces from the Townhall. You can get all sorts of edible treasures here and the place is usually hustling and bustling during the opening hours. But Sunday is still a day of rest, so I must have taken this image on a Sunday in winter (as there are no leaves on the trees). In Winter the market opens when it is still dark and closes after night has fallen again.

This is something I easily could do without: Sunday trading. Even though I am not a religious person, I believe there is a good reason to have one day of rest in the week. It is a day when the entire family can do an activity together. Some sort of pastime that excludes shopping. I think Sunday trading has a lot to answer for in regards to the disintegration of family values.